The Swedish sculptor, painter and draftsman Erik Dietman was born in Jönköping in 1937. He left his native Sweden at the age of twenty-two and travelled in Europe and the United States for ten years before settling in France. He developed a solid artistic culture by visiting modern art exhibitions and became interested in literature and poetry. Identified as a conscientious objector, Erik Dietman was forced to leave Sweden in 1959 and settled in Paris. There he met the members of the

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  Biography of Erik Dietman

  The Swedish sculptor, painter and draftsman Erik Dietman was born in Jönköping in 1937. He left his native Sweden at the age of twenty-two and travelled in Europe and the United States for ten years before settling in France. He developed a solid artistic culture by visiting modern art exhibitions and became interested in literature and poetry. Identified as a conscientious objector, Erik Dietman was forced to leave Sweden in 1959 and settled in Paris. There he met the members of the Fluxus group, and those of the New Realism, Robert Filliou and Daniel Spoerri, George Brecht or Ben, but always refused to be affiliated with a group. His freedom of spirit translates into an "energetic" activity where humor, derision, word games and materials are mixed. The artist creates blindfolded paintings, collages and assemblies with heterogeneous materials. As early as 1963, his first objects covered with plasters were created and they aroused interest.Multidisciplinary artist, fundamentally independent and unclassifiable, he voluntarily kept himself on the fringe of the artistic movements of his time with which he nevertheless had some affinities. As a free-thinker, he created a body of personal work, oscillating between reality and poetry. The criticism that he draws up against the avant-gardes is tinged with a subtle humor. The drawings, the assemblages, the sculptures, are articulated like rebus giving a material existence to the word. His plastic vocabulary, going from the composite assembly to the monumental bronze, conjugates the narration to the figuration and is directed towards the field of the visual counterptery. His art has naturally established itself as one of the most original contributions to 20th century sculpture.Erik Dietman's abundant work is articulated around recurring themes: language explored in its poetic richness, its double-meanings and its aporias, enjoyment and death, art as drift, refuge and commentary on life... The artist nourishes close relationships with gastronomy, matter, his fellow artists, Nordic legends and play.Dietman's work is a Marcel Duchamp-style counterpeteria sprinkled with Rabelaisian sauce. It is based on rules of the game constantly questioned, notably by irony, constantly sabotaged as if to better annihilate any so-called pure form.Erik Dietman died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 2002.
  

  

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